How eSignature works
An electronic signature isn’t a picture of your name on a PDF — it’s a recorded act, and the mark is only its receipt. This page walks the whole mechanism, from the mark to the sealed file.
Draw — A finger or mouse stroke.
Elena Fischer
Type — A name in a signature face.
Upload — An image you already have.
All three count equally — e-signature law doesn’t grade penmanship. What makes a mark binding is everything recorded around it, below.
What actually happens to the document
Three acts, and every step of each one is written into the record as it happens — that running record is what the last section seals.
The sender lays out the document
Everything starts with an ordinary PDF. The sender places the fields — signature, date, text — and assigns each one to a recipient, so every signer is asked for exactly what belongs to them and nothing else.
- Fields are anchored to positions in the file itself
- Every field belongs to one named recipient
- Signing order is the sender's choice — one after another, or everyone at once
- The uploaded document is encrypted before it is ever written to disk
Nothing has been promised yet — until it's sent, this is just a draft with boxes on it.
The signer opens a link — that's the whole setup
Each recipient gets a private link by email and the document opens in their browser: no account, no app, any device. Before they can sign anything, they agree to sign electronically — and that consent goes into the record like everything else.
- A private, single-purpose link per signer
- Optional one-time code by email or SMS, proving the right person holds the link
- Consent to sign electronically is recorded before the first field
- The mark itself: drawn, typed, or uploaded
Declining is part of the mechanism too — the refusal and its reason are recorded the same way a signature would be.
The finished file becomes its own proof
The moment the last signature lands, the PDF is digitally sealed over the exact bytes that were signed. From then on the file answers for itself: open it anywhere, and the seal shows intact or broken.
- A digital seal over the exact signed content
- A certificate listing every signer — who, when, and from where
- A hash-chained audit trail behind the file, where each entry locks the one before
- Every party receives the same final copy
Verification needs no special tool — any PDF reader shows whether the seal is intact.
Four things the law asks for
Under ESIGN, UETA and eIDAS alike, the questions a court asks keep reducing to the same four — and each one maps to something recorded in the journey above.
Intent
The signer acts deliberately — pressing Sign after seeing the document. Nothing is ever applied on their behalf.
Consent
Each signer first agrees to sign electronically, and that agreement is written into the trail.
Association
The signature lives in the sealed file itself, bound to the exact document that was signed.
Retention
Every party receives the final PDF, and completed documents are kept as records.
The evidence it leaves
-
Opened
Elena Fischer
9f2c…41ab -
Consented
Elena Fischer
←9f2cb70e…5d19 -
Signed
Elena Fischer
←b70e3ac8…9f04 -
Sealed
Signibility
←3ac8e51d…c8b2
Each entry locks the one before it, so a quiet edit to history breaks visibly. The full detail — including what the certificate records about each signer — is on the privacy page, and the product’s whole protection story is on the security page. This page is a guide, not legal advice.
Electronic signature vs digital signature
They get used interchangeably and mean different layers of the same document.
Made by a person
Electronic signature
You read the document, agree, and sign it — drawn, typed, or uploaded. This is the agreement itself, and it's what the law recognizes.
Made by the software
Digital signature
A tamper-evident lock added to the finished PDF. It can't say who agreed to what — it proves the file hasn't been changed since it was sealed.
Every completed document here has both: your signature on it, and the lock around it.
The questions people actually ask
Binding or not, what still needs a pen, and what happens when someone disputes a signature.
[email protected]Is an electronic signature legally binding?
For everyday business documents in most of the world, yes — the US recognizes them under ESIGN and UETA, the EU and UK under eIDAS. What a dispute actually turns on is evidence: who signed, what they saw, and whether the file changed afterward. That evidence is what this page describes. (A guide, not legal advice.)
Do signers need an account or an app?
No. A signer opens the emailed link and signs in the browser, from any device. Accounts are for people who send documents, not people who sign them.
Which documents shouldn't be signed electronically?
A few categories still commonly require pen, paper or a notary — wills, some family-law and court filings — and the list differs by country. For a regulated edge case, check the rule where you are before sending.
What if a signer disputes their signature later?
That's what the record is for. The certificate shows when the document was opened, when consent was given, and when and from where each signature was made — and the hash-chained trail shows nobody edited that history. It turns "I never signed this" from a stalemate into a question with evidence.
See the whole mechanism on one document.
Send one free — no card — and open the sealed PDF that comes back. Everything above is on it.